Diversidad vegetal en fragmentos de bosque estacionalmente secos sometidos a un proceso de restauración ecológica en el Caribe colombiano

Ecological restoration activities have been implemented in the tropical dry forest fragment of the Sanguaré Reserve, making it an ideal location for studying the effect of disturbances on the ecological structure of plant communities. Here, we analyze the impact of disturbance on alpha and beta diversity. Through Whittaker plots, we sampled weedy grassland, low shrub, tall shrub secondary forests, and mature forest vegetation covers. We calculated the effective number of species (alpha diversity) and communities (beta diversity), and performed cluster and detrended correspondence analyses (DCA). Sanguaré’s diversity was lower than in other dry forests; besides containing the alien species Morinda citrifolia, its floristic composition also differed from other dry forest fragments, for example, in the absence of Capparaceae or Zygophyllaceae. The low shrub had the highest alpha diversity among the vegetation types. Beta diversity, cluster, and DCA analyses revealed three species assemblages. These results suggest that disturbance and restoration processes have allowed the formation of areas with different perturbation levels and species composition. The alpha diversity analysis suggested an intermediate disturbance hypothesis since tall shrubs had higher diversity values than the reference mature forest and the grassland. We found that biotic heterogenization had occurred in Sanguaré, showing that homogeneization does not always occur under disturbance. Our outcomes show that the structure of communities under restoration has composition and structure differences compared to undisturbed forests.